Second GAPE 2024 Lecture - Ibrahim Shikaki & Daniel Younessi 'The Political Economy of Palestine: Occupation, dependency and real economic analysis'
On Wednesday, April 3, 2024, at 19:00, the second GAPE 2024 lecture will take place. The speakers will be Ibrahim Shikaki (Department of Economics, Trinity College, Hertford) & Daniel Younessi (The New School for Social Research, New York), who will present their research on 'The Political Economy of Palestine: Occupation, dependency and real economic analysis'.
Abstract
The situation of occupied Palestine presents a uniquely challenging field of analysis for political economists. How must an economy rooted in a settler colonial context, under military occupation and demonstrating multiple interrelated dependencies be studied through the lens of real economic analysis (REA)? The present work attempts a holistic approach toward the study of the Palestinian political economy, one which attempts to synthesize a class approach rooted in REA with a historical contextualization provided through deep engagement with the Palestine studies literature. The dual role of Zionist organizations and the British mandate are explored in facilitating the colonization of Palestine and the transference of resources and economic power from the hands of Palestinians into those of the new settlers. Questions of occupation, class transformation and multiple dependencies - whether in terms of capital endowment, or after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in terms of international aid or private debt - are analyzed so as to capture the specifics of the Palestinian economic situation. This historical analysis subsequently informs an agent-based economic simulation in which two subspaces - representing a relatively capital-abundant Israeli economy and a relatively labor-abundant Palestinian one, each including a capitalist and working class, are allowed to interact under a variety of socioeconomic arrangements. These include a base case without interaction, an 'apartheid wage' in which Palestinian laborers are pulled into the Israeli economy in times of real wage growth and preliminary steps toward a third case in which both subspaces are integrated. Robust non-convergence results prevail in all cases, and it is hoped that the utilization of REA in this way will serve as a deep economic critique of the so-called 'economic peace' argument.
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